I was born in Hiroshima, Japan and have strong images of my early childhood - visiting my grandmother's house in the mountains around Hiroshima city, listening with my father to his favorite phonograph recordings of a Mozart or Beethoven symphony, playing with my brother near the river. Japan, however, was a country at war.

Our lives changed from the moment that my father, a doctor, was drafted into the Japanese Army. My mother was left to raise her family of three children while working to put food on our table and to provide clothing for my brother, sister and myself.

Our lives became progressively harder as the war waged on. At night we used black cloth to cover the windows so the bombers could not see the lights from the city. The frequent wail of air raid sirens would drive us from our house to run to underground shelters. The ominous sounds of the B-29 bombers grew to mean, "time to hide underground. "

More and more men and boys were being drafted into the Japanese army. As I watched my three uncles being drafted one-by-one into the army, as a young child, I wondered why the government was sending its doctors to the front lines. On occasions our uncles, who by then had become Japanese Air Force pilots, would visit and give us chocolate candy. Chocolate was an extreme luxury in Japan at that time and inaccessible to the public; we were thrilled to have such a treat. Every time we ate the little pieces of chocolate, however, our noses would bleed. It was later that I learned that pilots were issued chocolate, heavily loaded with caffeine, to keep them alert and awake when they flew. I did not realize that none of my uncles would ever return.

Every evening at 8pm, my mother, brother, sister and I would gather around the radio. The program would feature messages from soldiers in the battlefield to their loved ones at home, accompanied by the sounds of the Haydn Serenade in the background. We always hoped that tonight's message would be from our father to us.

August 6, 1945 was a day that I can never forget. What started out as a typical hot, clear summer day, became, in a matter of one second, the most horrifying of nightmares. I was at school attending first grade when the bomb was dropped. I remember most vividly the

heat given off by the blast. The explosion killed almost all of my classmates. Everyone directly in the path of the blast had his or her hair turn to tar. From that moment, my life changed from the life of an average child to one where every day was a fight for survival.

Our house was completely destroyed; after my mother found my siblings and me at our schools we ran out of the city to escape the fires and the devastation. There was nothing but total destruction and death. The city was leveled; it was possible to see from one end of Hiroshima to the other because the entire town was reduced to rubble and ashes. The horror of seeing countless burned and charred bodies everywhere - on the streets, in the rivers, everywhere - is indescribable. Even as a child, I understood the overwhelming magnitude of what had happened. No man, woman or child in Hiroshima was unscathed or unaffected.

I remember having no food or water for three days as everything was burned and all water was contaminated. Then came a terrible black rain (which I later learned contained the radioactive ash fallout from the blast), which killed all of the wounded and made the survivors sick from the radiation.

Our worst fears were soon confirmed by news reports: the blast did not come from an ordinary bomb. That news set off a new round of fears that we would soon be invaded and systematically killed.

Government officials told us that nothing would grow in the ground around Hiroshima for ten years. Yet the very next year, my brother and I found some clover growing in the yard. We were thrilled by the discovery, in spite of the fact that the clover had seven leaves instead of the normal three, it was, nevertheless, a growing thing. The next year I planted a watermelon seed and it, too, grew.

Less than a year after the blast, school officials had somehow salvaged enough supplies to reopen the school, even though conditions in Hiroshima and the whole of Japan were still terrible. We had no school building. Our "desks" were salvaged furniture, including picnic tables, arranged classroom style out-of-doors. We affectionately named our school the "blue sky" school.

Somehow, when the destruction and devastation around you is total, the human spirit has the capability to provide an inner strength that even an atomic bomb cannot destroy. The power of this inner strength exists in all people. It allows one to overcome pain, misery and fear and rebuild a new life.

It has been almost 54 years since the day the bomb was dropped. I have learned much from that experience. Everyone who has experienced war has been left with physical and emotional scars.

Today, I find myself in the United States, enjoying beautiful music with friends and family. Simply being here is proof of the superiority of the human spirit over the destruction of war. War and the bomb itself have geographic boundaries, but humanity has no such limits.

I have overcome the bad memories of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. The Haydn Serenade, for example, is no longer a reminder of war but instead has become a delightful work that I can now fully enjoy.

As I listen to those who have expressed their experiences in the form of music, I rejoice in this embodiment of the human spirit. Each of us has a voice to be heard, a story to be told -- some through dance, some through the brush and some through music. Transcending from destruction to survival to the appreciation of beauty through music represents the triumph of hope over war. It is my hope that we never forget the lessons of war and that there will never again be another "Hiroshima."